B (4:57)

So the motto for my intellectual tour company is of course, pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will that goes

A (5:05)

on the brochure and good wine with dinner.

B (5:09)

That too. So these elections, which are both local but also Scottish and Welsh national elections, are absolutely fascinating because what they show you is that this country, which voted to leave, quote unquote Europe just about 10 years ago on 23 June 2016, is now becoming ever more European. Also in its politics. Number one, by far the biggest winner in England is Reform uk, which is a classic hard right populist nationalist party of the kind we basically didn't have in British politics for decades, if not centuries. But it's very like Fratelli d' Italia or Rassemblemont Nationale in France or Alternativa for Deutschland. I mean, I sometimes like to call it Fratelli Dinghilterra, the Brothers of England. And they are sweeping the board. I mean, extraordinary. Taking votes both from Labour and the Conservatives. That's finding number one. Finding number two, also becoming very European. Tremendous fragmentation. This used to be the country of the two party system, Labour and Conservatives, his or Her Majesty's government, his or Her Majesty's Opposition. Now we have a five party system in England. And if you take in the Nationalists in Scotland and Wales, both of whom are doing very well, you have a seven party system. And thirdly, as in, you know, Catalonian or the Basque country, the discontents that flow into a populist vote also flow into votes for separatist nationalist regional parties. So the Scottish National Party does spectacularly well in Scotland and for the first time ever, Plaid Cymrus seems to be doing pretty well in Wales. So welcome to Britain, a very typically European country.

A (7:11)

Let us go through these different political forces a little bit. I mean, we are in this strange situation where the Conservatives have been discredited by a long and very chaotic stretch in government. A whole bunch of different prime ministers struggling to deliver on Brexit in the way that they promised. They now have a rather impressive new leader in the form of Cami Badenoch, who's been improving in the polls a little bit in the last months. But, you know, that last decade plus of chaotic government is really hanging around her neck like a millstone. We have a Labour Party, the other big traditional party in the two party system you invoked, that was elected on a huge parliamentary landslide in general elections about two years ago, I believe, but not in a huge share of a vote already at that point. Point. Part of the reason for its landslide victory was the fragmentation of a political system. But they managed to concentrate enough of that vote on themselves. They had this huge parliamentary majority. They came in with a leader, Keir Starmer, who's a little bit of a chameleon. He was a loyal adjutant to Jeremy Corbyn when the Labour Party was extremely far left. He managed to win the leadership of a Labour Party by being somewhat acceptable, different wings of a party. Then he became very moderate as the leader of the Labour Party. Clearly expelled the Corbyn wing from the party, but never really seemed to have a positive program. And the British public has soured on him very, very quickly once he got into office. So perhaps the first question is, why is it that labor has fallen from grace quite so quickly and why is it that the Conservatives have not been able to pick up the slack of an unpopular incumbent political party as might be expected in a two party that still has a hold over the country.

B (9:06)

Yeah. So remember that Labour's landslide victory was to a significant degree because the right was split between the Conservatives and Reform uk and actually the labor share of the vote was slightly down from the time before. So it wasn't in that sense a landslide. So that's point number one. Point number two, it turns out that Keir Starmer just isn't a very good politician and he's made a whole series of often foolish mistakes, an endless series of U turns, apparently trivial matters like appointing Peter Mandelson as the UK ambassador to Washington. And then the Epstein files. More material is released and it turns out that Mandelson was deeply compromised and even sharing inside information from the Cabinet table. Now that in itself seems trivial, but there's just been a whole series of those. But above all, as you say, what are they doing with power? What are they doing with this enormous parliamentary majority? It's totally unclear to everyone where they're going now. That's partly because it's quite difficult to work out where a post Brexit Britain, which is now being abandoned by its best friend, the United States and has very little money left in the kitty, soaring public debt deficits, overburdened welfare state. It's actually quite difficult to work out what you would do in those circumstances. But whatever it is you might do, they're not doing it.

A (10:55)

What about the Conservatives? Why is it that they haven't been able to pick up the slack? Is it what I said earlier? Just the fact that they've been in government for 10 plus years and people are sick of them and not enough time has passed for them to be able to represent themselves. Is it that Camille Badenoch is not effective as a leader? That she hasn't figured out a way forward for a center right party? Or is it even broader trend? Is it just that we used to talk about the slow death of social democracy and in the 2000s and early 2000s, but it turned out that the slow death of social democracy was just a precursor to the slow death of the old catch all parties and Christian Democrats and Conservatives across Europe and other countries are now declining in the way that Social Democrats were and the Tories are just one instance of that.

B (11:40)

So I would incline to the second explanation because that's what we're seeing across Europe. I mean one could even go more broadly than Europe and you know what was peculiar not just to Britain, but to Europe post 1945 was liberal conservatism called Christian democracy on the continent. And now, as we see everywhere, the barrier between that and hard right nationalist populist is breaking down. And if anything, the voters are going off to the hard right populace. So that, you know, I would think, you know, I would favor that structural explanation. But on top of that comes, quote, unquote, 14 years of Tory misrule. I mean, people have not forgotten that from 2010 to 2024, we had a Conservative government which implemented stark austerity. And for many people, of course, even Conservative remain voters took that out of the eu. And everyone can now see that was a terrible mistake. And then there's a slightly sensitive issue which is that of course on the right, and particularly for populists, quote, unquote, immigration is the key issue. And as you know very well, immigration is not just immigration. It's about deeper cultural changes in the country. Right. I don't recognize my country anymore. Now, if you've got voters like that who are, say, elderly, white, middle class, a leader who in her own way is extremely impressive, Kemi Badenoch, but who actually grew up in Nigeria, not knowing that she was a British citizen until the age of 14, and sort of wears dreadlocks and so on, up against Nigel Farage, your bluff, you know, pint of beer, quaffing man from the 19th tee in the golf club. That's an uncomfortable subject to point to, but I do think that in an elderly electorate, and the Tories had an elderly electorate, that's a significant part of the explanation.

A (13:52)

So, Kemi Badenoch, if I'm remembering correct me, I think she was born in the United Kingdom, then grew up mostly in Nigeria until she was a teenager and came to Britain. Unlike Kamala Harris, who claimed to have worked in a McDonald's, but I think there was never any very strong evidence that she had. She did indeed work in a McDonald's and, you know, worked her way up in a very impressive way. I met her once when I was giving a presentation in Parliament when she was a backbench mp and I had never heard of her. And she came and asked a number of somewhat aggressive but very perceptive questions. And I remember being very impressed with her at the time and have been following her rise with interest since. There's many things I disagree with her on, but from that first meeting, I thought that she was a very impressive person. Well, I guess I'm a little skeptical about the role that race plays in this for the following reason. I had a debate with a good friend who knows British politics well when there was the leadership election for a Conservative Party. And the way it works is that the members of Parliament narrow the field down to two candidates and then there's a vote, there's a choice among the membership of a Conservative Party. And the membership of a Conservative party skews old, skews very Conservative, skews somewhat away from London and so on. And I thought that Cami Badenoch would win that election quite clearly. And my friend at the time was making the same argument that you just made, which is to say, I don't know, those old Tory party members who are very Conservative, who are quite wedded to an old vision of England. Are we really going to pick somebody like Cami Badenoch over Robert Jendrick, who went to university at the same time as me in Cambridge, white guy about my age, why wouldn't they go for him instead? And Cami Bedenoch won that election very, very clearly. So I guess, at least in that case, it seems like we have quite strong evidence that this wasn't so strong an obstacle to her. And it seems to me more broadly that when you look at even right wing populist movements, which the Conservative Party is not exactly, you know, people are very open to voting for ethnic minority candidates that they feel represent their views and that actually reassure them that, you know, immigrants to the country are able to stand up for the values of their homeland as they see them. And Cami Badenoch, of course, is not averse to a little bit of culture. Warrington, you know, she does very loudly stand for and represent what people on the right of politics would think of as kind of traditional English values. And I guess to me it's not obvious in, to me it seems that surely there's going to be some people not going to vote for her because she's black, because they are out and out racist. So it's going to be a lot of people who actually find that very appealing, who say that, you know, she's able to make a very full throated, persuasive case for those values precisely because she's not, you know, the stereotype of a person who might make those claims. So I guess, why do you think that she was able to win the membership vote in the Conservative Party so strongly? Is that a very different electorate? What's the difference?

B (17:19)

So, first of all, I really don't want to put too much weight on this particular factor. I think the other two factors are significantly more Important. Secondly, I was very impressed when they went for Kemi Badenoch, you know, a party which had the first Jewish Prime Minister in British history, Benjamin Disraeli, the first female Prime Minister in Margaret Thatcher. Now they go for a woman of color. Very impressive. But the fact is that an awful lot of Conservative voters have gone to Reform uk and the man you mentioned, Robert Jenrick, who was effectively the runner up and a leading figure in the Conservative Party, is now a leading figure in Reform uk, along with several other former Conservative ministers. So let's put to one side the question of quote, unquote, race, which of course, anyway, in Britain means something slightly different from in the United States and Kemi Badenoch. But the fact is, you know, at a drop of the hat, not just voters, but also ministers, senior politicians from the Conservative Party are going off to Reform uk.

A (18:39)

Yeah, that is interesting. As a side note, so Robert Jenwick was in at university with me, studying history as well, and nobody can remember him, which is a very strange thing somehow.

B (18:50)

He was, it is said, although I'm not sure this is unreliable authority, but according to the columnist Matthew Paris, he's the only person to have lost an election in which he was the only candidate, because there was apparently one election at the university where he was the only candidate and managed to lose.

A (19:10)

Well, I can disconfirm that because the same thing happened when I was an undergraduate in my college, a women's officer for the Students Union, for which the electorate was exclusively women and the candidate who ran had electoral posters which were, I think, slightly ill conceived in general and perhaps particularly ill conceived given that the electorate was exclusively female, which read vote for me because I'm gorgeous and lost to the option lost against Ron, which is short for reopen nominations. So there's at least one other election that I can remember in which that happened just quickly.

B (19:47)

His nickname is Robert Generic. And the point in he's so transparently opportunistic and comedian like that does help to explain why he lost to Kimmy Badenoch. But that's by the by. I mean, I think these are secondary issues. Now, just one further word on England specifically. I mean, let's remember that the Conservative Party is the most successful party in modern political history, bar none of the. And so I would still not want to write it off. I think when the memory of 14 years of Tory misrule is a bit more remote and Reform UK starts getting some scandals, which it's bound to do, it may by the time of the general election, which has to happen before 2029 it might be a different story.

A (20:30)

Some follow the noise.

B (20:32)

Bloomberg follows the money.

A (20:34)

Because behind every headline is a bottom line, whether it's the funds fueling AI

B (20:40)

or crypto's trillion dollar swings.

A (20:42)

There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com so speaking of Reform UK, tell us a little bit more about Nigel Farage, another chameleon like figure and Reform uk. Earlier you compared the party to Fratelli d', Italia, to the Rastein Ron national and to the Alternative for Germany. I guess I increasingly think that we may need to make finer distinctions between different right populist movements. I certainly think that Reform UK is a right populist movement. I see the resemblance in certain respects to Fratelli d' Italia for Italy and Britain are very different countries. I also see the resemblance to somebody like Marine Le Pen or even Jordan Bardela, who are very clearly in the right populist camp but have also distanced themselves from the post fascist roots of what used to be the Front national and the figure of Marine's father, Jean Marie. It does also seem to me as though there's a kind of different wing of European right wing populism which retains a deeper flirtation with the past, which is I think more deeply uncomfortable with any form of ethnic and religious diversity. And so I guess, you know, I want to see to what extent you stand by the idea that Reform and the AfD in Germany are comparable or to what extent it's helpful to think of those as really part of the same families of political parties.

B (22:28)

I think it is. It's certainly more like those classic continental populist hard right parties than anything we have seen in mainstream British politics for a very long time. I mean that such parties have been absolutely marginal in British politics. And so in that sense it's more like it. And of course it's major themes like immigration are very much the same themes. And also the mix of sort of cultural conservatism and nationalism with a more quote unquote left wing social and economic policy idea of generalist provision for the welfare state, pensions and so on. So in its basic morphology, but where of course you're right, is that it's a more, if you like, moderate, difficult word to use, civilized version somewhere on that spectrum. Right. So it's very much more, if you like, to the Maloney end of the spectrum than the Orban or the East German rfd. That's undoubtedly the case. By the way, important point. I think the effect of all this is not necessarily, indeed not probably that we see a Nigel Farage Prime Minister, but that either we have a coalition of Conservatives and Reform uk which again is exactly what we're seeing all over Europe, the temptation for center right to go with the hard right because what's the alternative? And. Or that we get a reform of our electoral system. Because if the only party, and if you look at today's elections, literally the only party that's doing well out of the electoral system seems to be Reform UK and the former big parties, Labor, Conservatives along with Lib Dems, Greens and others, all are going down to under 20% then suddenly there might actually be a majority for the reform of the electoral system.

A (24:43)

That would be remarkable. I mean historically in the United Kingdom you had a two party system between Liberals and Conservatives and the Liberals were supplanted by Labor. When labor was quite weakened far off to the left in the late 70s and 80s you had the kind of rejuvenation of the Liberal movement for Liberal Democrats. And it used to be the labor and Conservatives as the two major political parties that were against electoral reform because first past opposed was what was most likely to give them periods of consolidated rule, as indeed it continued to until recently. And it was the lone voice of the Liberal Democrats as well as I guess scattered even smaller parties that wanted electoral reform. So it would be quite a turnabout for labor and possibly Conservatives to now vote for electoral reform. Of course, in the British system that have very few checks and balances, Labour could just decide to go and do it and I guess they have a parliamentary majority to put it in place. But it would be an extraordinary anticipatory capitulation, wouldn't it? I mean it would really be sort of a recognition. But we have no chance of getting reelected. We don't even have a chance of having a period of wilderness and the opposition for five or ten years and then roaring back to be the governing party. We are giving up on the historic place that we had in the electoral system and whether or not you can get the strategic initiative within the party and the willingness to bear that public humiliation is a very interesting question. I want to cover the other part of the electoral transformation. We've talked about the weakness of labor and the rise struggles of the Conservatives and rise of reform. We are also seeing in many opinion polls, including opinion polls for next general election labor at this point running more or less head to head with the Green Party which is led by a leader called Zach Polanski, and it'll be interesting to learn a little bit about him. And in these local elections, there's another political force that has gained very significantly that we haven't mentioned, which is Muslim independent candidates that are basically sectarian candidates in largely Muslim parts of the United Kingdom, running on, in part on issues about the Middle east and Israel, but in part on deeply conservative social policies. And so you have, I would say, two trends, Right. The first is a form of sectarianism of which you've started to see inklings in different European countries as well. In the Netherlands, which has a system of proportional representation, a low electoral threshold, you had the rise of a Denk party, which is a kind of erdoganisque, mostly Turkish, Dutch party. And secondly, the Greens, to my eyes now look very similar to the La France ensuemese of Jean Luc Melanchon. In France, what the French controversy sometimes call Islamau gauchisme, a kind of strange mixer between a bourgeois, highly educated, urban environmentalist left, and they actually in many ways deeply conservative, if not reactionary, Muslim identitarian movement under the flag of one joint political party. So how do you assess the threat that the Green Party poses to the Labour Party, its prospects of establishing themselves as one of the major forces on the left? And what do you think about these Muslim independent candidates?

B (28:30)

So I don't think the comparison with La Francis Sumis really holds up. I would say that Zach Polanski's Greens are what the French call beau beau bourgeois bohemian. And I think his appeal is that he's radical, actually significantly to the left of labor on many issues and of course very strong on Gaza and so on. And I also actually think that the Green issues, the classic Green issues, I mean, I'm talking to you from Oxford, where the Greens have just had a tremendous success in the local elections. And those are not the kinds of voters you're talking about. So. But what I would say is that the Gaza and then Trump's war, or the US Israeli war against Iran are not only making us in Europe, including Britain, seem utterly hypocritical. The double standards question, Ukraine versus Gaza and Iran war, respect for international law and so on, but are really damaging what have been relatively good inter community relations in a country which has, I mean, I think the figure for London would be well over 40% foreign born, right? And nationwide over 20% foreign born with large Muslim communities, but also significant Jewish communities. So we've had absolutely horrifying repeated antisemitic incidents and stories of antisemitic violence here. I think, as it were, the Middle Eastern element is a very important part of that story. I think that's what's helping to tease our politics apart. But that said, Yascha, I think the situation here is nowhere near as bad in that respect as it is in France.

A (30:43)

You know, both countries. Well, I've spent significant amounts of time in both countries, too. I guess I'm more pessimistic than you are. You know, when I look at what Zach Polanski has said as leader of a Green Party and how he has positioned himself, he is himself Jewish, but of course, with members of La France and Sumis who are Jewish as well. But after the terrible terrorist attack on Golden Screen recently, in which somebody stabbed two visibly Jewish men in a very Jewish neighborhood of London, deliberately targeting Jews, the response of the leader of the Green Party was remarkable. Even after other attacks on British Jews in the proceeding weeks and months, he had doubted whether a feeling of unsafety among British Jews was rooted in reality or merely perception. His first response after this terrorist attack was to retweet somebody criticizing response from the police for subduing the attacker too harshly. Again, we're talking here about somebody who is in the process of stabbing people, grievously injuring them in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in a terrorist attack. And Polanski's first response was to criticize the police for doing too much to stop this attack. I mean, this is, to me a level of denial of a very clear and present threat to Jewish life in Britain, which is every bit as bad as what Jean Luc Menachem has done in France.

B (32:31)

Yeah, I mean, it's indefensible what he said. Couldn't agree more. And for me, it's utterly shocking that British Jews, ordinary families, are talking of needing to emigrate because they don't feel safe in this country. Where I guess I want to put push back a little bit is that, of course, La France ensoumise is a major electoral and political force in France. Indeed, there are scenarios in which the second round runoff might be between someone from La France insoumise and ensemblement national, and the Greens are nowhere near that. So I think it's sort of larger political significances is much less than that. But I mean, absolutely, we are in danger of getting those kinds of politics in this country, which we've been relatively free of.

A (33:34)

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee full terms@mintmobile.com well so and the other thing to say, by the way, is I think in Oxford the appeal of a Green Party is to students and left leaning academics and it's kind of a bobo party, the party bourgeoisie beau et mignon, a much used French term which French friends of mine never forgive me for pointing out, was in fact invented and termed by the American columnist David Brooks, which is a remarkable achievement for a writer. I have an episode with him that's partially about that of the podcast. But there are other parts of Britain in which the appeal of the Green Party is very different and you see that very clearly in the mix of candidates for local councillors and elections where it does feel to me like this political coalition which may or may not turn out to be sustainable of these very socially progressive students in Oxford, where the Greens have just won the council and I think by and large quite socially conservative Muslim candidates who mostly care about the Middle east and the Green Party is trying to keep this coalition together and it's not clear to me how long that can last.

B (35:21)

Well, that's exactly my point. I think that I'm not sure how long it can last during the splits like that.

A (35:26)

Yeah, well, so perhaps that's the natural transition to France. The other point I was going to make is at least in polls for the next general election and of course in a first past system, there's real questions about whether that can be sustained until then. The Greens in Britain at the moment get between 15 and 20% of the vote. So that puts them on par with Labour in many of those polls, sometimes ahead. In many polls they're a couple of points behind labor, but it's pretty close run. When I look at France, Jean Luc Melanchon in preferences for the first round of presidential elections, around 10% or so. So it's not obvious to me that at this point, and that's partially just a reflection of an extreme weakness of labor, the Greens in polls are that much weaker than La France ensumise is in France and in some polls it looks like they're stronger. But let's go to France for a moment, where we also have important elections coming up in 2027, in the spring, so it's about a year out. We're going to have presidential elections. Emmanuel Macron cannot run anymore, though, interestingly, in France there's not a lifetime limit on presidential ambitions. So Macron, who's a young man, can absolutely run in five or 10 or 15 years, but he cannot run this year. It's not clear that there's obvious centrist candidate who can be an effective stand in for the movement that Macron has built. The likely candidate for the center is Edouard Philippe. It may be a young former prime minister that served Macron for a number of years. Who is going to be the candidate instead? The frontrunner is probably on the right, either Marine Le Pen, if she is allowed to run, which will be determined in a court appeal this summer, or if not, then her young 30 year old stand in Jordan Bardela, himself an interesting figure, grew up child of Italian and on one side, North African immigrants who grew up in the suburbs of Paris. And then there is a very chaotic left with candidates from Jean Ducume, the kind of red green candidate off the left, two more moderate candidates like Raphael Glucksmann in the center left, but who may have trouble breaking through. How would you describe the political situation in France today?

B (38:03)

As it looks at the moment, the likely next president of France is, as you say, either Marine Le Pen or Jordan Badella. I would say if Marine Le Pen is not allowed to stand, the chances may be even better for Jordan Bardella, for the very simple reason that his name is not Le Pen. And remember that in the last, what, quarter century, the French have voted three times in the second round of a presidential election to keep out a candidate called Le Pen, twice to keep out Marine Le Pen, and before that, once to keep out her father. So there's something about that name which raises a certain allergy. And Bardella is presenting himself as a very model of a modern populist, as every presidential candidate has to do in France. He's published a book, there was reporting of business leaders meeting discreetly with him for a nice dinner. So I think that's what it's looking like unless, and it is a highly personal system, so it depends a lot on the candidates. Someone like Edouard Philippe or another candidate emerges and unites everything from Macron's liberal center to center left. But it doesn't look likely at the moment. So I think then the question becomes, how does a Europe with a President Bardella look? And there the question is I mean, everyone is putting it this way, but it's a reasonable question to ask. Is he more Meloni or Orban if he was really Viktor Orban and trying to put a spanner in the works at every step in Brussels, you know, simply to pursue the French national interest. Coute que coute. That's going to be disastrous for the EU at a moment when it faces this unprecedented triple challenge. I think I've said this to you before, under attack militarily from Russia, politically from the United States and economically from China. I mean, it's an extraordinary moment. If it seems more likely at the moment it's the Maloney option, then maybe that can work and maybe we can actually work out some way of strengthening European defense rather rapidly, because we know that we can't rely anymore on Donald Trump. And Vladimir Putin might have a go at Europe in the next two to three years, and then we will have, it seems to me, a sort of rather consolidated transition of the European right. The European Right will be something different from what we thought it was 15 years ago. When it was center right, it was Christian Democrat, it was liberal conservative.

A (41:01)

That's very interesting. So I've highlighted a few of the points where we might have slight disagreements. I absolutely agree with you about the electoral prospects of Jean Bardela. Interestingly, nobody in France I talk to agrees with that. And in particular, in the kind of macronist camp, they all think they can beat Marine Le Pen because they've done it before and for some reasons you're talking about, but they are convinced that Bardela is too young, too unproven, would fall apart in an electoral campaign. You know, it's all hype, it's all TikTok. And you know, when it comes to the debate between the two remaining candidates between the first and the second round, he would fall apart. And I've heard from quite senior people that they're reassured about the prospects of Badila running. I have to say that, to me, that gives me echoes of what a lot of Democrats were saying in 2016. Give us Donald Trump. This is going to be great. We're going to beat him easily. And it didn't turn out to be that way. Tell me more broadly about how you see the shape of France and perhaps Germany at this point. I mean, these remain, despite the enlargement of the European Union and the fact that that the Franco German couple is much less at the center of the EU in political terms and more broadly in economic and so on terms, the two most important countries in the European Union. Even more so now that Britain has left the bloc. And they both, in different ways, seem to be in a deep malaise. Germany, it seems to me, had a post war model that worked very well for decades, and in certain respects it has squandered that model. In certain respects it has failed to update that model in a world where it just no longer applies. France, in certain respects, has never quite had a model that worked, at least in a number of decades, and is struggling to find a model that works either. And so it does feel as though there is just this significant weakness at the heart of Europe in economic terms, in terms of a self understanding of what the role is that these countries in the continent can play in the world. Perhaps we should raise our eyes a bit above a political battle and think about why it is that from Germany to France to the United Kingdom, citizens have this deep feeling of economic stagnation, of fear of a future of growing irrelevance, of a social contract no longer really holding up.

B (43:39)

Yes. So to start specifically on Germany, because it is very different from France. France is a matter of slowly accumulating problems over a long period of time, if you like, an ancien regime which Emmanuel Macron attempted to change and failed to change with massive social spending. And the French Revolution is repeated because they want to raise the retirement age to 63 or 64, wherein in other countries people are working to 68, 69, whatever.

A (44:14)

And the striking fact, according to the Financial Times, is that the average pensioner in France has higher income than the average working person.

B (44:21)

Yeah. And by the way, it creates a beautiful, wonderful way of life which many Brexit voting Brits love to enjoy in their retirement. But, but the German case, as you know very well, is one of an incredibly successful national business model which has been blown out of the water by the triple challenge I just mentioned. The famous triad of cheap energy from Russia, cheap security from the United States and easy exports to China. Crash, crash, crash, all three have gone. And actually, you know, China is doing to Germany what Germany did for much of the world. The mercantilist model of export, export, export. And now it's turning the other way around. And China is actually catalyzing a rapid deindustrialization of Germany. Tens of thousands of jobs being lost in the car industry. So the situation is dramatic in the German case, unlike France and Britain, what Germany has is money in the public purse. So Friedrich Metz has roughly a trillion euros to spend over the next few years on defense and infrastructure. And so the question becomes, why is I mean, we've talked about why the French Malays and British Malays. But why is Metz not doing so well? And here, unlike in the case of Starmer, I don't think it's so much about the individual. I mean, it's true that he doesn't have much government experience, so he doesn't always know exactly what levers to press and sometimes he shoots his mouth off. But I don't think it's so much that. I think it's what, you know, Jaroslaw Kaczyski, the Polish populist leader, used to talk about impossibilism. Impossibilism, the impossibility of making things happen. And it seems to me that there is a real structural problem in Germany that this system, which was designed to prevent the emergence of another Adolf Hitler, in other words, you had a federal country, decentralized, lots of checks and balances, has in the meantime acquired so many more bureaucratic and party political checks and balances, including a complicated coalition, that it is actually very difficult to change things in a big way. Even a Maggie Thatcher arguably would be frustrated in the German system. So I think there's a structural problem there. Now, Yasha, the answers are to hand. The big European problem is quite simply the gulf between our huge potential and our actual. Mario Draghi in his report, Enrico Letta in their reports, they've told us what to do. Make it a proper single market, have a unified capital market, have a single digital space, have a Europeanized defense industry. There are all sorts of ways in which we could get much more dynamism back into Europe economically as well as politically. But at the moment the politics, which are of course still national, are simply preventing us from doing so.

A (47:29)

I have a few thoughts on this. So the first is that it just strikes me that you talk to any leading French politician or civil servant and they're very impressive people. They're often somewhat provincial. I mean, many of them don't have much experience outside of France. They don't necessarily speak good English and so on. So that's changing a little bit in the younger generation. But they are intellectually brilliant, highly educated, erudite, hardworking. They're elites in a very self conscious way, in a way that has the education to show for it. And yet France has by and large been quite badly governed for the last 60 or so years. You speak to German elites and of course there's exceptions, but by and large they're provincials and the mediocre, I mean, of the three candidates that Germans could choose from for chancellor in 2021. Olaf Scholz, who became Chancellor, who had what I think Churchill said about Baldwin, a municipal mind. He had been a somewhat successful mayor of Hamburg, but really very far from an impressive visionary or leader and with no charisma. You know, I'm in Lashet, who I spent an evening with at a conference recently, very pleasant guy, you know, drinks, you know, five shots of, you know, schnapps and smokes free cigarettes and chats with you and is very jovial, but really does not have a great understanding of world politics, let's say, you know, basic things, for example, about England from the United States, but he just does not know or understand Anna Lennard Baerbock, who, you know, was pushed as a kind of exciting figure, who is now the Secretary General of the UN assembly, but, but who I think has very deep political and other weaknesses as well. And it's just striking that you, you know, have a country like Germany, an impressive place with so many smart, hard working people and the top political personnel is just far less impressive than that of most peer countries. And there are structural reasons for that, the federal system and other things, but it's quite striking. Yet Germany has been quite well governed for most of the post war period. But I do think that is because they've stumbled upon this model that worked. And as long as that model didn't need changing, things were kind of okay. But the whole thing that the German political intellectual class has learned for some understandable reason is the slogan with which Conrad Aden won a number of elections in the 1950s and 1960s. Kind of experimented, no experiments, let's just stick with what we have. Because the alternative is who knows what. And now they have in part demolished that model. I mean, it is choices like Angela Merkel's decision to switch off nuclear reactors and instead import coal from Poland, which is effectively what happened, that have led to very, very high energy costs in Germany, which are strangling German industry. So that is an additional reason, but in part the model just doesn't work anymore. As Constanze Stelzenmuller has said, Germany used to outsource its energy needs to Russia, its market to China by exporting to the country and its military needs to the United States. And none of those three parts of a model work anymore. And there just seems to me to be lacking conversation about this in Germany. People are talking about it, but not in a serious way, lacking imagination for what the new role of Germany in the world could be, and just a complete failure to actually recognize These changes need to happen. So that's where the second point comes in, which is the coalitional math that because the populace are now strong on the right and to some extent on the left, you never have an ideologically coherent government and anymore it's always some form of grand coalition. At the moment, it is technically a grand coalition, which is to say a coalition between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats, which were two traditional Volkspartime, the two traditionally dominant parties in Germany, but often an effective cross ideological coalition. The government before that was Social Democrats and Greens on the left, as well as the Free Democrats on the center right. So you always have somebody blocking change in, in any direction. And I think in the current government, a big part of the reason for Mercer's failure is the complete immobility of the Social Democrats who have just not understood anything about this moment and are just blocking any attempted reform.

B (52:11)

Yes, I have to say I think you're slightly over egging the pudding in your description of the German versus the French elites and political elites, either of them very impressive people. In Germany, traditionally post 45, the most impressive people have been in business or science. Right. That was traditionally the way it worked. But actually Berlin, I was just there a couple of weeks ago. It's a very interesting, lively place with a very interesting think tank landscape. And if you look at the rethinking on Russia, on security and defense policy, I would say it's more impressive than that in London and Paris, partly because more rethinking needed to be done. But above all, what I want to say is this. I don't think the perennial slogan of the politics of the Federal Republic of Germany was kind of experimented, no experiments. Schroeder's labor market reforms in the early 2000s were quite expensive. I think the slogan or the motto was change through consensus. That was the key to the success of the German system, Right? Not just consensus within Parliament, consensus between federal government and the lender, but also, of course, between capital and labor. It's a phrase that I owe to my good friend Michael Matthes, change through consensus. And the problem is, as you rightly point out, and as I was saying a moment ago, that the system has become so complicated with the fragmentation of the party landscape, which is absolutely characteristic of Europe in our time, plus this accretion, like sort of barnacles on a ship's hull, of not just constitutional checks and balances, which are already very large, but regulatory and bureaucratic and procedural checks and balances. The change through consensus is thus proving extremely difficult to achieve, even if you have, you know, a trillion euros to spend. The larger point I just want to make, I think I've made this to you before, but I want to make it because it's so important to understand. In most European languages there is no separate word for policy. You have the same word for policy and politics, right? German, French, Polish, Italian, Estonian.

A (54:41)

The French have some distinction between le politique and la politique, which I've never understood and people have tried to explain it to me seven times.

B (54:48)

So you have to do that or you have to say plural, you have to say die politica in plural or something. But it's a significant amount. Because the key structural problem of Europe, I mean the European Union, is that the policies we need are European, but the politics are still national. So we need European scale defence industry, defence policy, capital markets, etc. Etc. But the politics keep holding us back because they're always national. And for me, the future of Europe hangs to a large degree about how we manage that tension. Because obviously the logical answer would say, oh, well, then let's make the politics European. Let's have European political parties, direct elections to European Parliament, been there, tried that, hasn't got us very far. So my view is just get on with it and try it, make it work.

A (55:43)

That is a huge structural challenge where a lot of important decisions are now taken at the European level. But it's very hard to master the will for some kind of coherent change at any of the national levels, but even harder to then bundle that at the European level.

B (56:04)

Also, if I may just quickly, one consequence of that is that you only need a single veto player in Brussels in the decision making of the European Union. So this brings us on our little tour to Hungary, because the Prime Minister of one small European country, because it was a member state of the eu, could hold up packages of sanctions that everyone else wanted against Russia could hold up 90 billion euros, which are crucial to the future of Ukraine for the next two years until he exacted his price. So the unique structural nature of this voluntary empire which is the European Union, this empire by consent, which empowers small and medium sized countries, enables them to block larger countries because of the requirement for unanimity, which is a beautiful thing and, you know, something new in history. But it does mean that the national politics can put an enormous banner in the works of a very big machine.

A (57:13)

The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. @blinds.com We've spent 30 years making it through surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50,000 five star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals, free samples, zero pressure right now. Get up to 45% off site wide plus get a free professional measure@blinds.com rules and restrictions apply. So I have one more question that is, I guess, predominantly about Western Europe, or perhaps it's starting to apply to Central Europe as well. And then I want to talk a little bit more about Hungary and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Americans always love these German compound words. And a lot of these German compound words are kind of made up in the sense that the grammar just allows you to put a lot of different nouns together and squish them together into one word. A lot of the supposed German words that I see on American list of great German words are not words that would be instantly recognizable to most Germans. They may be words that they understand in the same way in which you would understand the problem of this or this or this. You can scan the phrase and understand it, but they're not sort of existing phrases. But there is a lovely German phrase that is very long that really does exist, which is the idea that people are motivated by preserving what they have. And this is a German word and I think it applies to the German political scene and German society. And one of the reasons why there is a lack of imagination. But it does in France as well. I took part in an exercise called France 2050. This was French government's forward planning for what the country might look like in 2050. And was an interesting poll that was made as part of that, which basically found that most French people think that things are going to be a little bit worse in the future than today. They're pessimistic about everything, but they think things are not going to change that much. They'll just be a little bit worse. And. And it strikes me that that is really the attitude of a lot of Europeans today outside France as well. And I don't think it's realistic. I think that either Europe actually reforms itself properly. And in that case, things might be better for people in 50 years or in 20 years, or they fail to reform themselves and things could really fall apart. Things could really get a lot worse than they are. But to what extent? You know, in Britain with a triple lock on the pension system, in France with the rage at Macron for trying to do some Reforms in Germany, where, you know, perhaps there's some think tank people in Berlin starting to understand the need for change, but certainly it's not translating into policy, and it's not really translating into a demand for real change from voters either, other than perhaps relative to immigration, with people migrating over to the alternative for Germany. To what extent is Besichstandswahrung the real condition of Europe and can the continent overcome it?

B (60:17)

I think that is the question of questions, because we are still, in spite of all the multiple crises on the whole, in most certainly Western European countries, too comfortable. And look, the largest war in Europe since 1945 has been going on just next door for more than four years, longer than the Great Patriotic War of Russia and the Second World War. And I think June 11, if I got this right, it would be longer than the First World War, and most of life just goes on as normal in Western and Central Europe. So that, you know what? I've just written a new book, a very short introduction to Europe, and one of the points of the book is precisely to say to Europeans, wake up, learn from history. If you don't change, then things can collapse quite suddenly. Tancredi in Giuseppe de Lampadusa the Leopard Things must change so they can remain the same. I mean, the famous oft repeated line. And I think that is exactly where we are. And I think there's intellectual understanding of that among a lot of the European elites. Right. If you go to a policy intellectual conference, people will absolutely understand that. But does it translate into our politics, which are all about defending our pensions and defending the welfare state and defending this and that? I think not. And therefore the. The quite possible, perhaps even probable scenario is that Europeans in their majority, particularly west and Central Europeans, will choose gentle decline and suddenly one day find out that, like the old joke about going bankrupt, it's not gentle, it's quite sudden.

A (62:21)

That is my fear as well, that there's this option of gradual genteel decline in the minds of a lot of Europeans that may turn out not to exist. We briefly alluded to Hungary. I feel like a good conversation makes people depress them and gives them some hope. So let's try and give people some hope about Hungary and perhaps about Ukraine. The rest of this conversation. Viktor Orban ruled for 16 years. He clearly undermined democratic institutions in a very serious way. There's huge amounts of personal corruption with a great enriching of the entire environment of Viktor Orban, including old friends and relatives and so on. You had a genuinely unfree media Landscape. I remember when I was doing some reporting in Hungary, seeing every newspaper reporting on a speech by Orban with the same flattering photograph and the same positive write ups. Something quite striking to see. And a lot of people thought that it would no longer be possible to displace Orban from elected office at the ballot box. He finally overstayed his welcome in part because of some just straight up scandals of governance, you know, pardons for people who were running institutions which child abuse had taken place and things like that. Those ironically, in part because of election rules that Orban introduced to boost his majority, a particularly strong majority against him in the new parliament. I guess I have two questions about this. The first question is, is democracy more resilient than we thought? Is the fact that the opposition was able to displace Orban the ballot box, that he didn't call out the military or somehow try and sustain himself in power, that the opposition now has a 2/3 majority a sign that democracy is more resilient than we've given it credit for in the last 10 or so years? And secondly, what are the dilemmas of post populist rule? You know, the new government now will have a choice between either tolerating a lot of urban loyalists who are not committed to democratic rules and norms and who often are not qualified for their positions, keeping them in place, which has obvious downsides, or trying to throw them out of office. But that of course just normalizes the rule that every new government comes in and throws out the old guys. And it could even at the extreme lead to over consolidation of power in the hands of a new prime minister. So in general, should we be more optimistic about the resilience of democracy? And can the new government deal with this post populist dilemma?

B (65:35)

So I booked my ticket to Budapest many months ago because I've known viktor Orban since 1988. I first met him when he was a seemingly idealistic student leader, just three months after they'd founded this wonderful new party called the Young Democrats Fides. I still actually have my notes in my notebook when they telling me their goals. Rule of law, multi party democracy, all these wonderful things that he proceeded to destroy. So I wanted to be there to see his fall. But the day and the evening in Budapest was magical. It was even exceeded my wildest dreams because it was not a level playing field for all the reasons you have given, gerrymandering, media control, abuse of the state, administrat abuse of state funds and so on. But there was such a massive outpouring of popular will, of time for a change, that it just swept all those obstacles away. And what you had was this overwhelming sentiment, which was mainly about social and economic conditions. Time for a change meeting. And a seemly credible change, because Peter Magyar had a very clever campaign. He only gave one interview to the international media. He did virtually nothing in Budapest. He didn't touch the sort of classic urban liberal themes. He just went from small town to small town to village to village, talking about social economic issues and corruption. So the time for a change sentiment met what looked like a credible change. And it was a fantastic moment. Now here's a question that you posed. You and I have for some time been saying, I at least have certainly been saying Hungary is no longer a democracy, right? We have a member of the European Union, which is no longer democracy. It's a competitive authoritarian or electoral authoritarian system. So how come he could win an election? I think there is an answer to that. Elections are dangerous moments even for competitive authoritarian regimes, even with all those advantages that they have. Remember, Slobodan Milosevic was toppled by an election 2000. Remember the. That the spark for the Orange Revolution in 2004 was an election.

A (68:17)

But in those cases, right, it was these kind of pro forma elections that allow for the rallying cry of the opposition to come out and challenge the falsified elections.

B (68:28)

No, no, I mean it was like elections in competitive authoritarian systems. You know, on the day, it was relatively, it wasn't massively rigged, it wasn't like an election in North Korea. But they thought they had the system under control, which they had had for many years. The difference is that in both cases there was an element of violence. Whereas to all our astonishment at, I think about 20 past 9 on the evening of election day, a message flashed up on Peter Magyar's Facebook page. Viktor Orban has just rung me and congratulated me on my victory. And there I think you have to say that being inside the EU was something of a constraint. Were you really going to send in the thugs and use the Russians to try and falsify what was clearly becoming a landslide election result and just do it by force and fraud? So I think it remains true that it was a competitive authoritarian system, but the combination of time for a change, incredible change, and the external constraint of the eu. Now to your second question. It is absolutely fascinating because as you know very well, Yascha, in Poland we had another wonderful electoral moment when Donald Tusk was re elected in autumn 2023. And this has gone completely pear shaped. And we have what's now famously called the post populist trilemma. Three things you want to be rapid, effective and legal. And the trilemma says you can only do any two of them at once. And so Poland is now completely stuck. It has a situation of almost legal chaos. It has something almost like what Trotsky called dual power between Donald Husk's government in parliament and the law and justice president. Fortunately, and this is a very good news about Hungary, because the incoming Tisa government has got a constitutional majority and because the way Orban system, Orban did it, because you see, Orban wanted formally to comply with EU rules while actually violating very deeply the norms. So he did it through the constitutional majority. It's in a much better position and it can actually, with a bit of luck, you know, restore the legal order, restore more neutral civil service, actually replace legally the people that Orban has put in place. It's not going to be difficult. It's not going to be easy. There are going to be a lot of local, you know, people in the local power holders in place. There'll be issues with corruption. But for me, if you can undo such a far reaching state capture by essentially legal and constitutional means, that's going to be a very positive sign also for the rest of Europe and perhaps even for the United States.

A (71:47)

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Good Fight. In the rest of this conversation we talk about the war in in Ukraine. As Timothy points out, it is now going for nearly as long as World War I did. A remarkable statistic. How have the fortunes in the war in Ukraine shifted? And how is this war now at the frontier of a new age of warfare with drones, robots and all kinds of new technologies during a huge part of the fighting? And finally, what about the future of relationship between Europe and the United States? The conventional wisdom in Europe has become that there's no going back to the old relationship. But might Europeans be tempted to pretend that normality has returned if a Democrat wins in 2029? To find answers to these questions, to support this podcast, to stop hitting this annoying paywall as well as those ads, go to writing.yashamunk.com and become a paying subscriber. That's writing.yashamonk.com.